re: Slavery was not the only issue the South was fighting for

Circumstances may, on the surface, lead to wars but it is principles that really spark and sustain them. So the question is: What principles were the Southerners really fighting for?

Wars are fought over principles. People are willing to die for principles. What underlying principles lead to secession?

1. The right to be racist?
2. The right to sustain an economy and survive?

What about "upward" mobility?

That's taking a modern perspective and placing it in a totally different culture.

So you would be saying that a guy killed his own family because he wanted to be able to dream of the day he could own black people. I think the underlying current of the liberal propaganda is beginning to shine through.

quote:

---

quote:
One of the Pennsylvania newspapers I studied was full of race-baiting that makes me cringe even now. It slandered Lincoln, too, calling him every name in the book. But nobody made trouble for the editor until the summer of 1861, when he printed his opinion that the North had gone to war with the ultimate goal of freeing the slaves. This was considered so outrageous and offensive that soldiers just back from their three-months regiments attacked the office and sacked it.

quote:
“An editor who would coin as many lies as is embodied in that one short article, and published it with the criminal purpose of making his readers believe that the war was an abolition war, got up to benefit the n****r at the expense of the white man, was saying that our army deserved their defeat, and that he rejoiced over the victory of the rebels at Bull’s Run,” replied an American Republican correspondent who signed himself “Westtown”

---

LINK

Abrams, Ray H., "The Jeffersonian, Copperhead Newspaper," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 57 (1933), p.260.
Harper, Douglas R., "If Thee Must Fight:" A Civil War History of Chester County, Pa. West Chester, Pa.: Chester County Historical Society, 1990.
------------------, West Chester to 1865: That Elegant & Notorious Place. West Chester, Pa.: Chester County Historical Society, 1999.


Southern blacks in your accusation as well considering that Freed Blacks were 7 times more likely to own slaves than Southern whites.

LINK


1. The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experience, Raymond Logan and Irving Cohen New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1970), p.72.

2. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak New York: Norton, 1984), p.64.

3. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color, Gary Mills (Baton Rouge, 1977); Black Masters, p.128.

4. Male inheritance expectations in the United States in 1870, 1850-1870, Lee Soltow (New Haven, 1975), p.85.
5. Black Masters, Appendix, Table 7; p.280.

6. Black Masters, p. 62.

7. Information on the Ellison family was obtained from Black Masters; the number of slaves they owned was gained from U.S. Census Reports.

8. In 1860 South Carolina had only 21 gin makers; Ellison, his three sons and a grandson account for five of the total.

9. Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States, Carl N. Degler (New York, Macmillan, 1971), p.39;
Negro Slavery in Louisiana, Joe Gray Taylor (Baton Rouge, 1963), pp. 4041.

10. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner (New York; Harper & Row, 1988), p. 47; pp. 353-355.

----

Should Governemnt be allowed to violate the constitution to preserve moral imperatives such as 'slavery is wrong'?

I guess one would then be are with the government stepping in and shutting down Louisiana's entire oil industry permanently as well to preserve "wildlife". Because, with the precedent just set, moral imperatives should always give the Federal Government the power to kill its own economies and even its own citizens.

Once the government has the power and precedent to do something, there is nothing from stopping the government from abusing that power in other areas. For instance, look at the basis that lawmakers are using to shove the unconstitutional ObamaCare down our throats. There was a Federal Ruling recently that implied that the Commerce Clause covers MENTAL activity. So don't come in here pretending that precedence can't lead to abuse regardless of the justification of the original law.

----
The 1860 Census has only 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves and only 8% of families.

LINK

1. The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experience, Raymond Logan and Irving Cohen New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1970), p.72.

2. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak New York: Norton, 1984), p.64.

----

Why wasn't the South allowed the right to form their own Sacred Union peacefully? Why was the North's sanctity more important?

Simple Facts:

1. Slavery as an isolated moral issue had no bearing on secession.
2. The North was pushing laws and tariffs, the equivalent of the modern income tax, to put strain on the South due to the South's trading relationship with England
3. The South was never as anti-Europe/England as the North even during the founding of the country
4. The South was a distinct culture with a different vision of Federal Government power
5. There was a already rift between the North and South that had nothing to do with slavery
6. Slavery was intensely intertwined in the south's economy.
7. The South's Legal and Peaceful Secession =/= Civil War.
8. The North wanted to keep the South in subjection to the union against the South's will (never mind the moral implications of subjecting the Southern people to the North against their will and how that paralleled with the act of slavery itself)
9. After secession, the North began conducting actions that aggravated the South which led to the actual conflict.
10. The South actually offered to end slavery and peacefully secede. The north declined.


Ultimately, I believe that the primary reason that the South left the Union was over States' Rights as emphasized through the issue of slavery. I believe that States' Rights was foundational to the slavery issue, as the Southern states themselves reported at the time in their declarations of secession. To say that slavery came first is to put the cart before the horse.

However, according to the way that the United States was set up at the time, I believe that the Southern states had a legal right to secede. Were they "right" to do so? To them, yes, because they (the white, wealthy, planter class) were thinking about their own economic survival and prosperity. But, they were morally wrong to do so because their foundational reason (economic survival) was linked to a great evil. I am not saying that it was morally wrong to leave the Union. I am saying that slavery was morally wrong.

quote:

---

If the War was about slavery then why did Grant continue to own them after that War?

---

Grant owned a slave he freed in 1859. Not sure where you are getting your information from.

Couple of really good posts there

John Winthrop would have agreed with you, for the record. He and his Puritans genuinely believed in building that city in a hill.

The ancient Greeks would have considered the proposition absurd. Humans are what they are, there is no progress.

If anything, the past is more glorious than the future.

As a southerner, and a high church Episcopalian, I side with the Greeks.

quote:

---

They were fighting for their right to own other people.

Period.

---

The actual fight was because of the unconstitutional practices the Yanks engaged in toward The South.

Many Blacks owned slaves, too!

According to the 1830 federal census, free blacks owned 10,000 slaves, including in New York City eight free blacks who reportedly owned 17 slaves. Many black slave owners were large planters who raised cotton, rice, and sugar cane.

quote:

---

One of the biggest ideals was "state's rights," which is guaranteed by the constitution.

---

It just is not. The sovereignty of the United States lies upon the -people- not the states.



Don't claim to love this country and then lie about what it is and what stands for.

quote:

---

That's a wonderfully messianic vision you've got. Question for you. Do you think you have the power the change human nature?

---

I don't think anyone does.....and it is in mans nature to progress......

Everything in there can be boiled down to fear of financial ruin.

quote:

---

But they made damned sure to be clear about slaves: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

They also clarified that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired."

---

They loved their precious slaves.

States Rights